1000 Reasons to Close Guantánamo

30.9.10

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On Monday I marked a milestone that, when I began blogging on a full-time basis in May 2007, I had no idea I would ever reach. My article about the forthcoming anti-torture week in Berkeley, California, from October 10 to 16, which I am proud to be attending, was my 1000th blog post about Guantánamo — and closely related topics. I’m not specifically looking for financial help today, but it is always appreciated (especially as my computer has just died on me!), so if you’d like to make a donation, you can do so via the PayPal button at the top of this article (and readers in the UK can send a cheque — scroll down here for the address).

When I began my career as a specialist freelance journalist in the new media, it was something of an experiment. I blogged about Guantánamo because I had completed the manuscript of my book The Guantánamo Files, and wanted to keep up with developments (unexplained deaths, kangaroo courts, the stories of prisoners released). However, as the mainstream media was not generally interested in my point of view, and was largely content to report on Guantánamo sporadically, and mostly without much context, I set out to see whether I could become known and noticed online.

In those dark days in the middle of President Bush’s second term, thoroughly dissecting Guantánamo and exposing the lies and cruelty that sustained it was not an easy sell. Only hardened activists, it seemed, were immune to the torture fatigue that plagued many decent citizens of the United States. However, Cageprisoners immediately picked up on my work and began cross-posting it, and, realizing that there was an audience out there, I soon approached CounterPunch, the Huffington Post, Antiwar.com, AlterNet and ZNet, who began publishing my articles and spreading the word.

By the end of 2007, I was getting 30,000 page views a month, and by the end of 2008, when I was writing for the Guardian’s Comment is free and for Cageprisoners, had a regular weekly column for the Future of Freedom Foundation and had worked for a while with Reprieve, the London-based legal action charity that focuses on Guantánamo and death penalty issues, I was up to 75,000 page views a month, with much of my work covering the Bush administration’s farcical attempts to make the Military Commissions appear legal and viable, the release of prisoners and the legal challenges that culminated in the Supreme Court’s June 2008 ruling, in Boumediene v. Bush, that the prisoners in Guantánamo had constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights.

September always brings in hordes of casual visitors who have stumbled across my February 2008 article, Six in Guantánamo Charged with 9/11 Murders: Why Now? And What About the Torture?, with its photo of the 9/11 attacks (I had nearly 21,000 unique visitors on the 9th anniversary of 9/11, for example), but some of these readers have stayed on, and this month I’ve received 350,000 page views for the first time ever.

So as I mark my 1000th post, I’d like to point out that all my articles — the “1000 Reasons to Close Guantánamo” referred to in the title — can be found in chronological order here, but most of all I’d like to thank everyone who has supported, and continues to support my work. You provide me with the feedback that keeps me going when the seemingly endless uphill struggle in pursuit of justice gets too much, and you — and you alone — have demonstrated that, in the new world of communications facilitated by the Internet, an individual blog can make a difference, can get noticed, can challenge the mainstream, and can attract readers in significant numbers.

I’m not pleased that I’m still here writing about Guantánamo nine months after President Obama failed to fulfill his promise to close the prison, and the struggle ahead still requires dedication and commitment — and a refusal to succumb to apathy or indifference — but I will keep writing about it, to finish what I started when I began researching The Guantánamo Files five years ago, and I hope that you’ll stick with me.